


The One With the Creepy Carnival

by captainangua



Series: DeanCas oneshots [10]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abusive John Winchester, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angel Wings, Captivity, Carnival, Castiel Acts Like Endverse Castiel, Crossroads Deals & Demons, Demon Dean, Fallen Angel Castiel (Supernatural), Gen, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Season/Series 01, Transformation, i'm never nice to john, oh well, only slightly, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-08
Updated: 2017-10-13
Packaged: 2018-09-30 18:20:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10169012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainangua/pseuds/captainangua
Summary: In which Dean makes his first deal at 22, and doesn't end up in Hell but does end up a demon.A demon with an angel to fight.





	1. i wanna shelter you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CoralQueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoralQueen/gifts).



> John's pretty explicitly abusive in this fic in a way I'm not sure I actually headcanon him as, but for me this is what would spur Dean into acting as HE does here so... Yeah. Warning for that and also disclaimer of this being pretty canon diverged.
> 
> Second chapter and maybe more to follow when I have some time, but for now, here's my take on a great prompt.

Dean had been hustling pool too long to be much of a real gambler himself. Gambling money, when that meant no food coming onto the table for him and Sam, that wasn’t something he was prepared to risk.

Gambling his _life_ though, well. That was different.

“So Sam’d get all the money he needs for college and more, and I…?”

The man smiled and it made Dean’s skin crawl. He _looked_ human, but Dean knew better than anyone how little that meant. His clothes looked out of touch with anything this century, especially the dusty top hat that brought his height up to Dean’s shoulder; his skin looked almost waxy, and though Dean wouldn’t be able to say what it was, there was something wrong about his eyes.

When he kept on smiling without saying anything Dean snapped.

“I _what_? You’re not exactly giving me a whole lot of details here. Maybe I was wrong about not wasting you,” Dean added when nothing he was saying seemed to encourage a response.

The man chuckled, and Dean wanted to squirm like he was hearing fingers scrape down a blackboard, but managed to hold himself together because the last thing he wanted to seem in front of this thing was weak.

“But this isn’t a question of logic, is it Dean? This is about _faith_.”

He’d never told the man his name, Dean thought as he reminded himself what a bad idea this was, on so many levels. Every instinct he had was screaming at him to cut and run, and come back later when he had proof this thing needed killing, to come back with back up –

But five minutes later Dean was shaking the clammy hand offered out to him.

*

“That was quick,” Sam remarked, without looking up from his homework, when Dean walked back into the motel room.

“Yeah…” Dean agreed, looking around the room, half expecting to see the room covered in little demonic bats by now. He hadn’t been able to get any real contract out of the guy, only an assurance that Sam would get his money, and that no harm was going to come to either of them because of this deal. Though Dean was feeling twitchy for obvious reasons, he figured that should have at least covered the bases for them.

“How’s your face doing?” Dean asked, as he sat down across from his brother with a beer, watching Sam’s fingers flutter to his jawline.

“It looks more purple, doesn’t it?”

“Well… kinda passing into green already, so doing alright.”

Sam rolled his eyes. “Thanks.”

Dean took a swig of his beer, then placed it back down on the table and started carefully picking at the label. “Shouldn’t have said what you did.”

“Yeah, well, you always say what he wants to hear and that’s not always helped you out, has it?”

Swallowing, Dean leant back in his chair. He’d liked to think that Sam hadn’t ever worked out that part, because for some reason he couldn’t get the happy families dream of them all actually getting along one day. Even after last night, and their Dad punching Sam in the face for saying that he wanted to get out – that he didn’t want to waste his life hunting.

Hell, Dean had kind of felt like hitting Sam himself for that.

Which was probably what had partly inspired this guilt tripped decision, come to think of it.

“So what was it?”

“Hmm?”

Sam leaned his chin down on an ink-stained palm. At this rate he’d have a multi-colored face. “The thing you went after today. What’d it turn out to be?”

“Oh. Thought you thought figuring that shit out was a ‘waste of a life’.”

“Don’t be a dick.”

Dean sighed dramatically, buying himself a few more moments of time. “It wasn’t anything, Sammy. Just a string of messed-up coincidences.”

Sam screwed up his face. “But that was five people you had lined up there who’d _all_ visited that carnival, and then _all_ had their life change dramatically for the better, and then _all_ disappeared. What if it was demons?”

“Demons? You heard Bobby’s rant last time Dad brought that up. Nine out of ten times someone tries calling him about something they think is a demon -”

“It’s not, I know. But what about the one time it is?”

Dean scowled. The possibility of demons, and the disappearances of all those people were stuff he’d let himself forget about in making this dumb deal. Probably wouldn’t even give them any money, but if he did, and things went bad, well… that would be proof, wouldn’t it? And then Dean could go get him to change things back.

“Or what about fairies -” Sam pressed on.

“Would you leave it alone? And _fairies_? What are you, six?”

“Well the lore -”

“Jesus fuck, dude, I said it was nothing, alright?”

Sam flinched, making Dean feel like a piece of shit. But God, Dean wanted to be angry about something. If this money thing didn’t work, he’d been played like an idiot. If it did, then his brother was going to leave him and their Dad to their ‘wasted life’ and Dean was going to have stopped his family tearing itself apart by breaking it up himself.

*

“Dean?”

“Mm?”

“So I went down to the teller like you said…”

“Uh-huh?” Dean put down his book and tried to ask nonchalant as he heard his brother slowly set down his heavy bag of books on the floor.

“What the hell did you _do_?”

Dean grinned. It had worked then.

“Now that doesn’t sound like a nice enough thank you, Sammy – not if you’re ever gonna make it as a fancy lawyer.”

“Dean. Last week we couldn’t afford milk for cereal. Today I could – I could buy a cereal _factory_.”

“That right?”

Sam slumped his shoulders looking like someone had just killed the puppy he’d never got to own.

“Just… Dean, was this… This can’t be legal, or _natural_ – fuck, is this about that wish-granting demon?”

Dean’s grin widened, though it was rattling his how quick Sam was figuring this out. “When is anything we do ever either of those things? Jeez, Sammy, don’t look the gift horse in the mouth.”

“Not unless it’s a _Trojan_ horse.”

“Nice one.”

Sam shook his head, causing his overgrown fringe to flop down over his eyes. “Dean, I can’t take this money. _Especially_ if you’re not gonna tell me where it came from.”

“Well I won’t and you will,” Dean snapped, sitting up in his chair. “Look – you wanted an out. Here – congratulations, I got you one and it’s non-fucking-returnable. Don’t you dare not take it.”

For a moment they stared each other down, Sam looking taken aback from the anger on Dean’s face, but then Dean looked away, scowling, not sure he wanted to keep looking at the brother who was still planning on abandoning him, money or not.

With Sam shouting after him, Dean walked out the door and climbed into his car.

Their Dad hadn’t come home since he’d hit Sam for the first time. He’d asked Dean to check out the carnival disappearances and then disappeared himself, as usual.

At least for once they wouldn’t be struggling for food money.

Dean stopped the car just after he drove out of town to scratch at his lower back which had been driving him crazy since he’d left the motel. It wasn’t the only place he was itching either, and he was coming down with a killer headache. Maybe this latest in a long line of rank hotels had him coming down with something. Or maybe the creep he’d made the deal with had decided that’d be funny for the price he paid to be some kind of disgusting rash.

Feeling calmer, although not more comfortable, after the drive alone, Dean steeled himself and turned the car back around the way he’d came.

Before walking back into the room he checked his phone again. Still a big load of nothing from their Dad.

Sighing, Dean turned the in the lock and walked in to find his brother arranging at least fifteen different kinds of beer around three pizza boxes on the table.

“What’s this supposed to be?” Dean asked as Sam turned and shrugged sheepishly.

“A thank you. Look -” Sam went on before Dean could say anything, “I still want to know where the money came from. You gotta understand how creepy this looks. But… apparently we’re loaded now and it’s thanks to you so we deserve a party or something.”

Dean raised an eyebrow and slumped himself down on his bed. “This your idea of a party? Fuck, you need more friends, dude…”

“So do you,” Sam bit back as he tossed over a beer which Dean weighed up in his hand for a few moments before opening it with his keys.

“Maybe you could _buy_ us some friends now.”

Sam laughed, and for a moment the whole dumb idea felt like it was gonna be worth it.

An hour later when Dean was regretting how much he’d eaten and his head felt like it was being stabbed in two separate places he wasn’t feeling so sure. Especially when Sam started getting thoughtful.

“You should come with me.”

Dean didn’t say anything for a long moment, just stared at the almost empty beer bottle in his hand.

“And what d’you think I’d do out there?”

“You’re good at plenty that’s not hunting, Dean. ‘Sides. Not like they don’t have monsters in California, right?”

Dean rolled his eyes and let his head roll back on the bed’s headboard. His head really was killing him now, and the itching was getting worse – and it really was almost everywhere now.

“Tell me about ‘em when you get there.”

Dean heard Sam sigh from the other bed. Sometime during the evening the room had gotten dark and neither of them had bothered switching a light on.

“And you’re not taking a cent.”

“I told you, it’s your money.” Dean had been clear about that before – he figured it was safer to keep his ambiguous deal from getting any more complicated.

“And you still won’t tell me -”

“Just – leave it alone, would you?” Dean said, louder than he meant to.

“Dean -”

“Just. Don’t.”

Twenty minutes later Dean heard his brother start snoring, and decided to at least try getting some sleep himself.

*

Dean woke up feeling like his skin was being flayed off him. Gasping for air as he sat up, Dean registered that his jaw felt strangely heavy, but he ignored that, and managed to hobble his way into the bathroom and lock the door.

This was no sickness, this was his deal catching up with him, it had to be. No lasting harm, he’d said. How could this kind of pain not lead to lasting harm? What the hell was happening to him?

Feverish with fear and actual fever Dean clutched onto the sink to look into the mirror, but…

Oh.

Those were not his hands, or at least not the hands he’d had a few hours ago. These hands were red, and not in an inflamed way, in an actual bright santa red way, with a scattering of what looked like snake scales, and fingers that ended in short black claws.

Trembling now, Dean forced himself to look in the mirror.

After studying it hard for almost a minute, Dean began to recognize it as his own face. It was still the same basic bone structure and eye size and colour, but the eyebrows were gone, his whole skin had gone that reddish hue, his ears were pointed and the place where the stabbing pains had come from on his forehead now had horns the size of his hands growing out of them.

His first thought was that he looked like Hellboy.

His second thought was more of a stampede of panicked thoughts and curses aimed at himself and the world in general. If he went into see Sam he’d probably try and kill him, what did his voice even sound like, what did his dick look like now, would he ever be able to have sex again, would they lock him up in an Area 51 place and do experiments on him, what possible kick was that creep getting out of all this –

And those thoughts all got in before Dean noticed his new tail, at which point his brain needed a few moments to simply shut down.

*

“ _What the fuck did you do to me_?” Dean yelled, finding that his voice did still work the same as he marched out of his car and back into the carnival, which seemed to be almost ready to pack up and move on again.

The creepy ringmaster in the old top hat was, as Dean had for some reason expected, standing on the step outside of his campervan waiting for him, swinging off the little banister and his face lighting up from the moment he saw Dean walking towards him.

“Ah,” he said, checking the old-fashioned timepiece swinging from his pocket. “You’re later than I expected.”

“I’m what now?”

“Boys,” the ringmaster shouted, giving no indication he had heard Dean speak. “The new attraction is here. We’ve got ourselves a demon at last.”

Dean paused for only a moment before continuing to stride towards the little gremlin that had ruined his life. “I’m no one’s attraction, and you’re giving me my goddamn life back.”

“Ah, but my boy, I wasn’t the one who took it away, was I?” the ringmaster remarked cheerfully. “That was you. And I’m afraid that unless you want your so recently wealthy brother to share in your fate, or in a worse one of his own, then you will be my attraction, my demon, the new freak for my freak show, and whatever else I require you to be for the forseeable future.”

Dean gaped. “My people are hunters. They’re gonna find you, and -”

The ringmaster leaned forward, and his position on the step meant that he was able to look Dean straight in the eye. “We both know that your ‘people’ consist of an absent, abusive father and a teenager planning on crossing the country and becoming very busy very soon. And you’re not the first hunter in my collection, oh no. I’ve been in this game a very long time, and the show must go on, because it has _always_ gone on.”

With great dramatic flair, the little man reached out a hand and placed a finger on Dean’s nose.

“I’m sure you’ll come to love your new home soon, but all things in time, demon, all things in time.”

Just as Dean was about to snarl and claw the ringmaster’s face off he felt both of his arms grabbed roughly behind him by something he wasn’t able to turn to look at.

“But for now,” the little man was saying as though nothing had interrupted him, “I want you to _sleep_.”

Dean was about to yell out a nice zinger about exactly what he planned on actually doing when he felt his eyes begin to droop as though they were being anchored down. Oh no. No fucking way was he just going to -

*

When Dean woke again it was morning, and they were moving.

 _They_ , because he wasn’t alone in the moving padded trailer cage he’d woken up in. There was a beautiful man who looked like he’d just wandered out of Woodstock the night before staring down at him and pressing a hand against his forehead.

“Hmm. Your fever’s gone,” Dean was informed, from a voice that sounded too deep to be coming from the speaker.

Feeling fully awake now, Dean forced himself into sitting out and looking out the cage bars to the endless fields they were passing. They had to be miles away already from where they’d last been, from Sam, who’d be waking up alone, hungover on a schoolday.

“We left last night,” his nurse told him, bluntly but not unkindly.

Dean said nothing but continued to stare at the fields, which didn’t just seem cutesy rural empty, they looked wrong somehow, as though nothing he was looking at was real.

“Bill’s been determined to get a new demon for months now. He didn’t half-ass the job.”

“How come a demon?” Dean asked, voice feeling hoarse. This was real, the was happening to him, he was never going to see his family again and if he did they’d probably want to see him dead.

“I’m his angel. He needs a demon to fight me or my show suddenly stops drawing up the same crowd.”

Dean screwed up his face and turned around, looking again at his cage-companion.

“Yeah well, he sure full-assed you then. Where’s your wings and halo about?”

The ‘angel’ laughed. It wasn’t a happy sound.

“Oh, I’m not one of Bill’s creatures. I’m a _real_ angel,” he said, eyes glimmering with that same sad laughter as he continued to stare at Dean as though he’d never seen something so interesting in his life.

“What, is this like a Dolly Parton thing for you?”

“No. Like you I… made some well-intentioned choices and now I’m trapped here.”

Dean let his eyes scan up and down the figure in rags sitting across from him with his legs crossed in a yoga pose. Though he felt too dazed for skepticism he couldn’t imagine someone looking less like a holy, feathery servant of God.

“Some choices,” was all Dean said.

“What made you make yours?”

“Money.”

“Liar,” the angel said without hesitation. “You did this to protect someone.” His face slid into something like pity, and Dean couldn’t stand to keep looking at it.

“For your sake I hope that worked out.”

Dean managed to hurdle the lump in his throat to manage, “Yeah, me too.”

*


	2. the devil got him good for sure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean meets new friends.

It took time, but eventually Dean started to understand what it was they were moving through everyday. It was like a dream version of what the real scenery of the area or like they were going too fast to see it clearly – though it didn’t feel as though they were moving any quicker than a snail’s pace.

But it wasn’t until Dean gave in and asked his strange travelling companion that he actually found out.

“Bill likes to move us through different planes when we travel. Currently, we move through a minor passage of the fae realm,” the ‘angel’ Castiel told him, without opening his eyes or sitting up from where he was slumped against the other side of the cage.

Dean had rolled his eyes at this explanation, but when he paid attention to the scenery – and there was little else to do as they moved – several things that didn’t make any sense. Blurred grinning faces that flashed for a moment before leaving; brightly coloured birds that seemed less like birds and much more like small dinosaurs when Dean concentrated on them for long.

Eventually, Dean stopped trying to look.

“So, what happened to the demon you fought before me, angel?” Dean asked one day. Well. It might have been another day. Time passed strangely. No one had fed them, but he hadn’t felt hungry either. Sometimes the sun moved but it never seemed to go down.

“I killed him.”

“Oh.”

“Yes, oh.”

“…were you supposed to?”

“Not exactly. But he irked me.”

“So, if I started irking you.”

“Please don’t.”

This was now about seventy-five percent of their conversations were short, clipped, with Castiel taking the last word. But sometimes the so-called angel was chatty, and seemed to find Dean fascinating, which would be its own kind of flattering if it wasn’t for the guy’s incessant need for closeness, for touch. He seemed to have no concept of personal space, which was a precious commodity in a cage only just large enough to fit the two of them.

“So you come from a family of hunters.”

“My dad hunts, yeah.”

“But your brother doesn’t want to. You want him to leave it and behind, to be safe, almost as much as you want him to track us down. You don’t want to be forgotten.”

Dean glared at the hand Castiel had placed so caringly, so certainly on his leg.

He hoped Sam had found the car.

“Yeah, yeah. Enough with the pyschobabble shit.”

Then the angel looked right at him, which he didn’t usually do, and Dean had to catch his breath. Fuck, those eyes. Dean felt like they were picking apart his brain, his soul, and though he squirmed under the attention, he couldn’t drag his own eyes away.

“It’s a hard thing to consider for you, being forgotten,” Castiel said softly. “But sometimes it’s a kinder thing than being wrongly remembered.”

Dean gave a slight nod, which was apparently the right response, and the angel finally looked away.

…which had been the end of that talk. Dean wasn’t all that sure most days if the angel was exactly all there.

It was like waking from a dream when they eventually emerged out into sunlight – real sunlight, which was brighter and colder than Dean had remembered it. They were still somewhere in the fields of the Midwest by Dean’s estimate, but other than that he had no clues. He could be totally off and be in a different country to Sam and his Dad and he’d never know it.

When they passed their first McDonald’s billboard he felt like he could breathe again.

It was when they stopped that night that Dean finally got to meet a few of his fellow prisoner-performers outside the one sharing his cage.

Not because they got to walk out of their cages and socialise or anything civilised like that, but he and Castiel’s cages were put out next to two other carts that, while very clearly cages, were not anything like their one.

One of them looked to be the kind of stall thing you transported horses in, and the other looked like a large red bird cage, where a girl, almost as red as Dean but feathered wings sprouting from her arms was hanging upside down by her legs. When she noticed Dean, she cocked her head to one side like a real bird, her red hair falling endearingly half over her face.

She was maybe fifteen.

Fuck, these people were taking _kids_ , too…

“Oh. New demon,” she said, with a bright smile that lit up all of her red face. “Are you going to kill this one too, Cas?”

Dean raised his eyebrows, and looked over at the angel, aware this might be something useful to know.

“Only I don’t want to go getting attached, if…”

“Has this one attacked you with homophobic slurs in a predatory manner, Charlie?”

Charlie gave Dean a solemn look over. “Well, no…”

“So I have no current plans in killing this one.”

Leaning his head back, Dean let a slow breath out. “Well that seems like an easy bar to pass.”

“Good.”

Dean looked at the angel, really looked at him. Castiel didn’t look back but Dean decided he liked the guy.

“Cas looks after me,” Charlie explained away as she extracted herself from her beam and flapped a little ungainly down to the floor.

“You’re a harpy,” Dean realized.

Charlie made an offended sort of squeak. “How dare you,” she said with a huff, before grinning. “Yeah. If it weren’t for _circumstances_ ,” she said with a pointed eye-roll at her cage bars, “I think I’d be almost ok with it. Like, super weird but kinda almost comic-book level awesome? I got off easier that Victor anyway.”

“What happened to Victor?” Dean narrowed his eyes, only half-joking when he looked at Cas and asked, “did you kill him too?”

He still had no idea if he believed this guy was an angel, or what an angel was supposed to do, but he was hoping he could get some confirmation they weren’t completely homicidal.

“Nothing happened to him, he’s just grumpy.”

“I heard that,” said a voice from the horse box. It was a nice voice, Dean decided, in a sort of detached way. Today was weird.

“Come out and say hello,” Charlie demanded, as Dean watched the ghost of a smile pass over Castiel’s face. He was beginning to get a grip on the dynamics around here.

Groaning, a figure appeared at the window of his sleeping quarters. “Hello,” he said solemnly, before putting in a, “Y’know, I was finally getting some sleep in there,” to Charlie.

“Saying hi to new friends is more important.”

“Well hi, again,” Victor said. “New demon. Great.”

“So, what’s your deal. You look pretty normal on top.”

The man raised his eyebrows cynically but there was something glittering there in those dark eyes that told Dean he wasn’t feeling as grumpy as he looked. “Standing in a horsebox right here, man. Take a fucking guess.”

“Centaur,” Dean and Charlie said together.

“You’re quick,” Victor said flatly to Dean, before adding, as Dean opened his mouth, “But if you make one crack speculating about what I might currently be hung like, and I’m afraid we can’t be friends.”

Dean shut his mouth and proceeded to nod slowly. “Understood. We may have a problem later though.”

The centaur rolled his eyes. Again, Dean felt the need to slap himself out of the sense of normality slipping over him. This made no sense. They’d all been horribly mutated and forcibly kidnapped. They were all just _sitting_ there, doing the monster carnival equivalent of noting each other’s haircuts.

“So… I’m guessing escape is hard,” Dean started, getting a smile from Charlie at least.

No one who’d got Dean into the cage seemed to be around, and even if they could hear him he wasn’t sure he cared – he wanted a reaction.

“Well see, our evil captor man has no kryptonite we’ve been able to find.”

“What about when you’re performing? Can’t you escape then?”

“Don’t you mean when ‘we’re’ performing?” Victor asked, only a little mockery in his voice.

“Well, see I was hoping to be…”

“No,” Charlie said with assurance. “They do something to us every time that they let us out of the cages.”

“And then again when we’re put back again,” Cas said.

Dean looked between them both. “How long you guys all been here?”

Charlie shrugged. “… _six_ months? I wished for a bed for a night that wouldn’t come with any unwanted advances when this weird little man found me on a park bench.”

“Two years,” Victor said. “I was hunting… ah.” He laughed. “You haven’t met Bela yet… Well. I was hunting Bela, who, before she got locked up somewhere worse than jail, used to be a very talented jewel thief. I was a detective. I heard the last place she was seen was here, and joked to the man at the entrance that my only wish was to find the woman I was looking for.”

“…And he did,” Cas finished for him.

“So, what about you?” Dean asked.

“I’ve been here twenty-four years.”

Dean blinked. “Seriously? I’ve not even been alive that long. Like, dude, you do not look -”

“He’s not kidding about the angel thing,” Victor told him as Charlie giggled.

Swallowing, Dean focused on the man sharing his prison. “And what would an angel want to wish for, exactly?”

“Well,” Castiel said as he examined his fingernails, “this one was too cowardly to die, and wished for punishment for his failures.”

Dean didn’t get to find out what those failures were, or meet Bela, that night. But he did have one more very odd exchange with the angel once the other two had gone to sleep.

“Have your family always hunted?”

“No. Something got my Mom, so my Dad started off a new family tradition,” Dean said, and rolled over, wishing sleep was easier to achieve with horns that wouldn’t let you comfortably pass out on your front. “And do you ever sleep?”

“No, angels don’t need to,” Cas said distractedly as Dean heard him sitting up. “Dean, what’s your last name?”

“What?”

“Just… tell me.”

“It’s Winchester.”

The angel said nothing.

“What? Y’can’t just leave me hanging now…”

After a few moments Cas responded. At first Dean thought he was crying, but eventually he recognised the strangled sounds as laughter. “And you… you’re the eldest brother?”

“Yeah, I told you that already.” Dean looked around finally, and saw by the dim lights of the other tents and vans that the angel was definitely crying as well. “Seriously, dude, what the -”

“Oh… nothing,” Cas managed eventually, on a hiccup. “Only that... I think you might have accidentally saved the world, Dean Winchester.”

Ignoring the shivers creeping up his spine, Dean scowled and lay down again. “Fantastic, now would you let this world savior sleep?”

*

**Author's Note:**

> Hey so to anyone confused by the fact I just posted 3 identical fics... Yeah, my computer was screwing me around, so I kept trying to post the same fic. *tannoid voice* sorry for any inconvenience this may have caused.


End file.
